The Broken Pearl
by Rakahn
Summary: AU. The Merpeople of Bermuda have long forgotten their ancient enemies, the Serpents. But when Sam is cornered by one outside the city, she is faced with truths that few people want to hear, and even fewer wish to believe. DxS
1. Those Teeth!

**Summary:** AU. The Merpeople of Bermuda have long forgotten their ancient enemies, the Serpents. But when Sam is cornered by one outside the city, she is faced with truths that few people want to hear, and even fewer wish to believe. DxS

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters, blah blah, on to the story!

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The mermaid Sam was a bright little thing, a teenage girl with a tanned, tropical body and equally tropical purple fins and eyes. Her body started small and rounded out at the junction of her human and fish halves, then tapered along her tail and flared at her fins, creating a highly visible and easily recognizable outline. Her straight black hair cascaded down to the small of her back, flaring with every move she made. And though her clothes were seaweed green, they consisted of a flaring skirt and a simple strip wrapped around her chest, neither of which did anything to camouflage her against the white, sandy seabed.

She would be easy for a predator to find.

And find her one did—just one, though that was because a Serpent found her first, and few creatures wanted to tangle with a Serpent. They looked like distant cousins of the Merish, but a Merish would never suggest that. Serpents were monsters with translucent scales all over their bodies and faces and impossibly long, snake-like tails where the Merish's mammalian flukes and fins were. They had claws on their grotesque, webbed hands, pointed fish fins where their ears should be, and sickly, pale skin under their scales.

Worst of all, Serpents were pure predator, built to kill, who didn't make any distinction between eating some dumb fish or a soft-skinned Merish girl. Where Merish had supple fins on their arms and blunt teeth, sharp spines grew at Serpent elbows and pointed teeth lined their mouths, along with curved, hollow, poison-filled fangs.

The Serpent that found Samantha was no different. Thin olive scales covered him, even his "human" torso, casting a greenish tinge over his entire body and a discolored glow on the reflective white sand below him. His tail was gray-green, complete with faded black tiger stripes that marked him as a venomous member of his kind. The spined fin running along it only made him look bigger and more monstrous. His hair—the one thing that might have made him look Merish, was white like bleached bone.

He circled her, shoulders tensed and murderous grin in place as he readied himself to strike. Unreal, bright green eyes flashed at her with vertical black pupils. Samantha's arms wrapped around her sides as she shrank into her fright, threatening to crush the gills on her sides.

"Well, well... What brings you to my part of the Ocean, little fish?"

She swallowed. If anyone else had called her that, they would have suffered a fist to the jaw. Now, though, Samantha could do no more than shiver as a body of green and black stripes coiled around her.

"Don't you know it's dangerous outside of the city? A little girl like you could get...hurt."

The way his tongue ran along his pointed teeth didn't help her nerves. In fact, she tried to back away, forgetting that the rest of his body was on her other side and backing into a rough, scaled tail. She turned, startled; when she looked back, his face was right in hers, spiny fins flared at the sides of his face, teeth staring her in the eyes.

"Now that you're here, though, why don't you stay a while? It's dinnertime, and I'm _starved!_"

She could feel the thud of her heart beneath her ribs at the feral hiss in his voice. Daring to look away from his face—those teeth!-she hoped for a way out. Up was not an option—she doubted she could pick up enough speed like that. But there, between his coils, was an opening that he hadn't seemed to notice.

"Join me for a bite!"

But Samantha didn't feel like sticking around. She whirled in place and ducked underneath him, almost kissing the sand in her rush to get away. Arms tucked against her body and tail fins spread, she swam madly for the gate. The enraged hiss of the monster trailed after her.

A garden of coral separated her and home. She ducked beneath a bright pink branch, stopping to catch her breath. Her eyes watched the ocean above, trying to see where the monster was, trying to see...

...Nothing. Tiny fish fluttered above the coral but the rest of the area was clear. Was he waiting for her to appear again before he gave chase? But no, she watched the sand she had just crossed and he wasn't anywhere. He hadn't followed her. Why hadn't he followed her?

She didn't think about it long. She was still shaking as she picked her way along narrow pathways through the coral, finally reaching the home-side of it. He wasn't there, either, so she darted for the nearly invisible gates of her city.

_'I'm alive! Dear Poseidon, I'm alive!'_ Never had she invoked the name of the ancient sea-guardian, but she needed _someone_ to know! She certainly wasn't telling _anyone_ back at home.

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_**A/N:** Edited once for grammar and legibility (the first posting was rushed—mistakes were made). No real changes were made to the actual story._

_Thanks for reading!_


	2. Fickle Friends

**A/N:** I'd like to take a moment to thank ALL of my wonderful readers for stopping by and giving me a chance. A special thanks to Kiomori, lokoforsonic9559 and Biisaiyowaq for the lovely reviews!

...And I'd like to grovel in mortification for not updating in so long...I'm sorry! As a result, this chapter has been sliced in two (I'm stuck on the second half). While I normally would finish it and give you everything at once, but it's been more than a month and I won't have you wait any longer.

**Disclaimer:** If this _procrastinator_ owned DP, there wouldn't BE a show at this point, much less fanfiction for it.

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Stories make a person interesting.

The bigger and more incredible the story—like one of facing 30 feet of deadly mer-eating monster and living to tell the tale—the more interesting the person. And when the telling is first-hand, rather than the story of a friend of a friend of a friend's second cousin, one could expect to be the center of attention for at least a few days.

Samantha personally knew the school's popular crowd. Brightly-colored, shiny-scaled, and always decked out in the latest fashions, they drew eyes wherever they went. Despite being the friend of one, Samantha wasn't included. With her plain black hair, minimalistic fashion sense and scaleless body, she faded into the background.

So it was that one day, after being ditched at the school's front gates and shoved aside by worshipers of the popular crowd, that she finally got fed up with being overlooked. Sure, she was still embarrassed about being so frightened during the experience, but at an age where everyone was supposed to _be_ someone, being dismissed and forgotten was even worse.

So she told them what had happened at lunch, where the entire student body happened to be gathered. She wasn't quite sure what to expect, but she figured it would get someone's attention.

And it did. Minutes later, Samantha was still waiting for her friends—and the entire cafeteria—to stop laughing at her.

Any other girl might have broken down in the midst of them all. Any other girl might have fled the room to cry. But Samantha wasn't any other girl, and she was royally pissed. Both hands slammed the table in front of her, sending multicolored servings of shrimp and shellfish dancing off the surface. "Why are you laughing? This isn't funny!_"_

Valerie, a girl she just barely got along with after almost two years, was politely hiding her smile behind one hand in a show of good sportsmanship. Paulina, on the other hand, had a full guffaw going. The shells that made up her iridescent gold dress were clinking together as her stomach heaved. Her black-brown hair swirled through the water. Her scaled, glittery turquoise tail curled around her, and equally blue eyes glanced Samantha's way as she managed a break in her laughter. "You expect us to believe a story like that?"

"What—" She didn't get to ask her question, though, as the voice behind her was enough to drown out a crowd at its quietest.

"Are you _stupid_, Marina?" The way her last name was sneered made her pause before turning toward the speaker. The culprit was Dash, a blue-scaled, muscle-bound sports star that she had known—distantly—since their early years. Many a time had that tone been used on the geeks and the underclassmen, but she had managed to avoid it...until now. "Did you think you could scare us with some bogus _snake_ story?"

"We're in _high school_, Samantha," Paulina continued in her trademark nasally whine. "That's a story that mamas tell to their little babies to make them eat their veggies. You'd have to be an idiot to believe in those."

Samantha's face tingled as she blushed. Her grandmother had told her of the Serpent's kind since she was young, and never had she called those stories untrue. And now Samantha had seen something that matched those stories to the letter. Was she the only one who believed such tales?

"It was probably an eel or something," Paulina continued, flaring her fins in Samantha's direction as if to fan her away. "Scared of a big fish...How pathetic." She turned away, smirking. "And people call me a ditz."

Samantha nervously rubbed her arm and looked over her shoulder at the crowd. She knew it hadn't been her imagination, and yet...

All around her, the others kept laughing. Valerie had finally stopped hiding it. The underclassmen joined in. Across the table, Dash had his eyes crossed and a couple of crab legs jammed under his upper lip in a lopsided impression of a fanged grin. Samantha shrank into herself more as his antics started the crowd up again.

Then, it all faded into the background as some mer shifted to the side, revealing someone she knew exceptionally well. And as his laughing eyes turned her way, her face shifted from surprise, to shock...to outrage.

Between the crushing pressure of the teasing and taunting happening around her and the hurt of being betrayed by her best friend, she barely noticed Paulina leaning close as if to tell her a secret.

"You know, we never would have known if you hadn't said anything."

She whirled around, face flushing red as she shot the smug girl a withering glare. The fashionista was right, in a way, and that made the bad situation even worse. Finally, with a solid flip of her fins, Samantha was out the door and gone.

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Back at her table, the laughter died in a brunette boy's throat. He hadn't missed the look she sent his way. And while one part of him was a little scared of what she might say, he discreetly backed out of the crowd to follow after her.

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_**A/N: **It's not who you think._

_I'm still learning this whole writing thing. Anyone willing to give any pointers, please do? I'll write longer chapters as I get better at this._

_Some slight—VERY slight changes were made to the first chapter. Nothing that changes the story, but hopefully it will give a clearer picture to new readers._

_Thank you for reading!_


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